


Dark Spark

by dragonofdispair



Series: Vampiric Codex [7]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampires, Animal Deaths, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Continuity What Continuity, Dark Fantasy, Gen, Horror, Vampire!Bluestreak, Vampires, dark fantasy edging into horror, is that a thing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 12:34:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16086194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: Vampires stalk Cybertron’s nights, but Bluestreak’s monster is in the mirror.





	Dark Spark

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone looking for some resolution of Drift’s fate, here’s… something that has nothing to do with Drift at all. XD
> 
>  **Warnings:** Dark fantasy, vampires, blood drinking, and **animal deaths.**
> 
> Beta’d by Rizobact

_We're hunting in the night,_  
_Take your children away~♪_  
         ~Blutangel, [Children of the Night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQHOl1YEtqc)

 .

✱✱✱

.

He woke in a panic. He tried to draw air into his engine, his cooling system, but all he got was humid filth. Soured energon, oxidized collant, cold metal… the stench of death. His filters clogged with it, and he coughed. Then coughed again, trying to clear the reek from his intakes, but there was always more. He was surrounded, drowning in the scent of decay. He tried to move, to throw off the weight holding him in place. Something -- several somethings -- shifted, but didn’t release him.

With a groan of pain, Bluestreak tried to bring his optical feed up. His vision fritzed as it booted, and he could see nothing but darkness and static. With a whimper he shifted -- tried to shift -- and brought up his error queue. Hopefully the static on his vision was the result of something he could fix himself, and not the result of his optics getting shattered or anything…

Cracked. One of them, anyway. Well that was a pain. But there wasn’t anything wrong with the second one. Rerouting his entire optical feed to the unbroken optic, he rebooted the entire system again.

This time the static cleared slowly, and Bluestreak tried to figure out where he was.

Dark. Dark and warm. He could hear the _tick, tick, tick_ of cooling bodies somewhere, somewhere very close. There were things, abstract shapes of metal, packed in around him, but now that he could see them, he could shift them. He pushed the one in front of him, and it moved. The whole pile moved with it.

He inched into the newly open space, and pushed against the next thing. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, Bluestreak dug himself out of the shifting, unpredictable pile.

He smelled the surface before he saw it: not fresh air, but something that wasn’t the death-fetor he’d been buried in for he-didn’t-know-how-long. Metal. Concrete dust. Smoke. The after-lightning reek of ozone. The scent revitalized Bluestreak. Soon the whiff became a flood, and he saw stars.

With a heave he pulled himself free of the pile and tumbled down the side. The impact jarred something and Bluestreak cried out in pain.

“Holy frag,” someone said nearby. “Hey. Hey! There’s someone alive in here.”

Alive. Yes. Bluestreak was alive. Alive when all the other… others were dead, killed… he wasn’t sure how. It had been terrible. He’d been terrified, but his memory whited out. His last memory was… was fangs. And screaming. Screaming and clawing with blunt fingers as the vampire… the vampire he…

“Hey, it’s okay,” the voice said soothingly. Bluestreak heard him creeping closer. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. Primus,” the mech whispered as a new flare of pain blossomed in Bluestreak’s chassis and he moaned. “It looks like he ripped your whole chest open, doesn’t it, but you’re going to be okay! There’s a medic on his way…” Gentle, comforting fingers touched Bluestreak’s shoulders.

 _Hunger_ swamped his thoughts and his vision blanked out and the next thing he knew he was sinking his fangs into the mech’s neck. Warmth, _life_ flowed from the wound and Bluestreak drank it down.

“Blue! Primus!” Blustreak flinched, recoiling in pain from the newcomer and his prey both. He hissed. He was eating that!

And it was getting away. He lunged.

 _Ka-blam!_ The blast sent him tumbling back into the pile of bodies. Fighting his way free from the death-scent again, he lunged for the red-mech. Blackened, burned armor flaked away from the blaster wound.

 _Ka-blam!_ The second blast knocked his feet from under him.

“Stay down, Blue,” the red mech advised, but Bluestreak was beyond listening. He _needed--_ The weight of the mech’s foot came down on his chest and he screeched in pain. He could feel the foot pressing against his spark casing, crushing… “Primus,” he cursed softly and Bluestreak shrieked and clawed at the leg pinning him down. Static fritzed across his vision. “I’m sorry. You were a good soldier.” He heard the whine of Ironhide’s larger canon charging…

“No!” Bluestreak shouted, confused and terrified. He’d… he’d… and then he’d… “Ironhide! Please!”

He felt/heard/tasted the hesitation, and with a strength he didn’t know his frame possessed -- especially not half-blind with pain, damage and error warnings covering his vision, radiating outward from where Ironhide’s foot was pressed against his spark -- Bluestreak bucked. He couldn’t throw the older, stronger mech off of him, but he forced hesitation to turn into a reshifting of balance and he twisted, scratching his claws on the broken ground in his effort to escape.

Ironhide’s weight came back down on him. “Pr--Bluestreak?”

Bluestreak cried out again. “Ironhide, I’m--” It hurt, everything hurt, and he was so _hungry._

“Just shoot it,” a cold, commanding voice said and Bluestreak rolled his head to look up at the newcomer. Another doorwinged mech like himself, he vaguely recognized Prowl, one of the Autobot high commanders, second only to Optimus Prime.

“But--” Ironhide hesitated and Bluestreak twisted again, struggling to throw him off, to escape or to eat him, he did not know.

“That is not your soldier,” Prowl said harshly. “It is the enemy. Kill it.”

“No…” Bluestreak begged. “Please no… “

“All due respect,” Ironhide addressed Prowl just as harshly. “Bluestreak’s still in there. He’s the only one who survived all…” He looked around at the devastation, the pile of corpses from which Bluestreak had pulled himself. “All of this.”

 _“Bluestreak_ did not survive it.” Prowl’s voice was like ice. “That is just a monster wearing his form.”

“No…” Bluestreak whispered, finally realizing what had happened to him. _No…_ He keened.

“But…”

Bluestreak heard the massive stride, the slow and steady beat of a powerful fuel pump, and his mouth watered, fangs lengthening. He was _so…_

“What’s going on here?” Optimus Prime demanded, somehow both commanding and gentle.

“Found a survivor,” Ironhide reported, his fuel pump slowing with relief. Bluestreak clawed at the ground again. He needed-- but the foot pinning him didn’t shift.

“That _isn’t_ a survivor,” Prowl snapped with an irritated flick of his doors. “It’s a trap.”

The Prime stepped closer, knelt down, looming over Bluestreak and he lunged as best he could. He was _so close._

“He hasn’t fed yet, has he,” the Prime rumbled over Bluestreak’s stressed whine.

“Attacked Swerve,” Ironhide said, gesturing to the side, where the mech in question was being attended by a lithe feminine medic with blue accents, “but no. Didn’t get much before I drove him off.”

“Sir--” Prowl started, but was interrupted by the Prime.

“We’re taking him back to Ratchet,” Optimus commanded firmly. “Secure him for transport.”

“I really must protest--”

“I’ve heard your protests, Prowl.” The Prime stood, too far to even think of lunging for him and Bluestreak’s teeth gnashed in frustr-- _frag what was he thinking?_ “The Decepticons made their choice, but Bluestreak has not. We will take every precaution, but we won’t be executing him out of hand.”

“Sir--”

“Or do you doubt Ratchet’s ability to keep control of one vampire?”

Prowl’s expression visibly soured. “I do not,” he said stiffly.

Ironhide looked down at the pinned vampire. Bluestreak, despite his every effort not to, was contemplating just how much energy it’d take to rip off a patch of his commander’s armor and latch onto the fuel line beneath. He was pinned at a really bad angle for it, but-- “I think,” Ironhide said, as Bluestreak’s claws started scratching at his armor again in his efforts to get _any sort of fuel,_ “we’re gonna need a gag.”

.

✱✱✱

.

The long fangs pierced through the gag easily, but that only further entangled his mouth, hindering him as he was trussed up and thrown in the back of Ironhide’s truck mode. The mech cussed, and the liberal use of Primus’ name made Bluestreak howl in pain, but when he wasn’t trying to writhe free, he was trying to writhe closer with claws and bound fangs.

He was practically dumped in a room at the end of the drive. A cell. Ironhide transformed and looked at him with pity, but all Bluestreak could see and hear was the lifeblood coursing in his fuel lines.

The cell door closed, and with the barrier in place -- even if Ironhide was still _close enough to smell delicious_ \-- Bluestreak could think again. He groaned in pain. They hadn’t been particularly mindful of his injuries and he _hurt_ all over. It felt like he was dying and somehow that _didn’t_ pale in comparison to the fact that _he was a vampire._

Oh, yes, vampire. Horrible. It wasn’t like Bluestreak _wasn’t_ feeling horrified at that, but _his chest had been ripped open._ And he was more than just _hungry;_ the _need_ to fuel literally felt like he was burning from the inside out. And those facts seemed so much more important than what had happened to him.

Maybe if he… He couldn’t help but let out an elated sound when he found a junction in the chain. He worked his claws into it. Then at least he’d be _free_ to eat something when he got out of here. They couldn’t just leave him here forever. Right. _Right?_

Except they could, couldn’t they? It wasn’t like he was going to starve to death -- whatever it felt like right now. There weren’t any more gladiator pits. The Decepticons had blown _those_ up during the break out, but they could keep him here until they’d been rebuilt… Bluestreak whined, deep in his engine, making a sound he couldn’t recall making before. He _needed_ to get free. He needed…

The door opened.

Bluestreak flinched from the sudden light, but it wasn’t sunlight, just the bright hall lights. They were swiftly blocked out by a blocky mech, larger than him, smaller than Ironhide. Bluestreak’s entangled mouth watered, until he got a good sniff of the mech and recoiled. Nope. Bad news. Can’t eat that.

The dog however…

The mechanimal was large, led along behind the mech by its muzzled snout. It moved sluggishly, as though sedated, and limped, but its fuel pump was strong. It whined, but the mech pulled it along. Bluestreak lunged at it before remembering that he was bound and gagged and that he couldn’t bite _anything_ right now. Now he whined.

The door shut, plunging the room back into the lower light Bluestreak had adjusted to.

“It looks like you gave everyone quite a scare,” the mech -- the medic, who Bluestreak only belated realized was Ratchet -- said. It’s not like a grunt like Bluestreak had ever warranted the attention of the Autobots’ _Chief Medical Officer._ “Not that I blame them for trussing you up like this. You’re lucky you didn’t get shot-- again,” the medic corrected himself, seeing the wounds Ironhide had left on him. “Hold still while I untangle you so you can eat this.”

 _Food!_ For the promise that he’d actually be _allowed_ to eat the turbodog, Bluestreak held his head still. He briefly considered biting the medic’s hand when it came within striking range to to untangle his fangs from the mesh cloth, but once again, the mech’s actual scent -- _No! Bad idea_ \-- stopped him.

The gag came free and Bluestreak lunged for the turbodog… and ended up flat on his face, groaning in pain because he was still completely trussed up. Hissing in frustration, he turned over, so he could at least _see_ his prey!

“Here.” The dog whined and thrashed itself, but the medic held it firmly so that its neck was bared. Bluestreak saw the panicked pulse of fuel and he whined again. Ratchet pushed the dog closer, until that pulse just barely brushed distended fangs.

The dog howled.

Bluestreak didn’t remember lunging a second time, just that now, _finally,_ he was latched onto the fuel he needed. He drank greedily, while the medic held the dog steady for him.

There was a part of him that realized he should be horrified by this. A part of him that remembered _being_ horrified at the concept that vampires ate living things. That was a small part. A weak fluttering memory, completely overwhelmed by the utter satisfaction of finally feeding.

The dog’s struggles eased as it weakened, then stilled as its spark gave out. Bluestreak sucked the last of the fuel from the corpse, then released it.

Ratchet pushed away the corpse easily. “Are you sane enough to talk?”

Bluestreak hissed. “Zzsssss.”

“Try retracting your fangs first,” the medic advised.

Oh. _Oh._ With a painful sounding snap, Bluestreak pulled in his fangs. “I canss talk.” He lisped a little, and Bluestreak frowned. That wasn’t right. He’d retracted… He ran his tongue over his teeth and found he still _had_ fangs, larger and longer than the canines of any real mech. Just not _so_ long he couldn’t do anything but hiss and growl. “I. Can. Talk,” he repeated, this time careful to avoid hissing. “I’m Bluesstreak.”

“I know,” the medic said. “But you’re also a vampire, which makes you dangerous. You’re the first fledge we’ve had to deal with too, though I suppose that whoever did this isn’t going to stop. I don’t suppose you know who it was?”

Bluestreak wracked his memory. He remembered terror and smoke and red optics and claws. Pain. “No.”

“Pity,” the medic said coldly. “I would have liked to be able to give the hunters a target.” Ratchet untied a chain, rearranged it, then swiftly relocked it. “We’re figuring this out as we go, so… I cannot untie you yet. We don’t know how much control you have. So this is what’s going to happen: we are going to wait until you go into torpor with the sunrise, then get you repaired. You’ll be less hungry, I imagine, without all these injuries. Then tomorrow evening we’ll get you fed again. You’re going to just have to be patient while we figure things out.”

Bluestreak made an animalistic huff he hadn’t realized he was capable of. He didn’t _want_ to be patient.

But Ratchet was being careful. He adjusted the chains to be mindful of his injuries, but didn’t let Bluestreak free enough to lunge. And even if he could, there was still something, something buried in the mech’s scent, that screamed at him that he _shouldn’t._

“Yessssir,” the new-vampire managed with only a slight slur.

“There’s very little we can do for your comfort until you’re repaired and fed,” Ratchet said, adjusting another chain and frowning at the injury beneath. “But would you like us to adjust the temperature? Or give you a blanket? I’d offer a bath, but that would require untying you.”

Oh a _bath._ The death-stink of the corpses he’d woken up in still clung to his plating, the dried toxic fluids of the dead mechs marred his plating. But Ratchet had said no, and there was frag-all Bluestreak could do about it. “A blanket?” he asked tentatively. He didn’t feel cold, but he wasn’t actually feeling the ambient temperature much at all, and now that he was thinking of it his senses were just… confused on that point. But the floor was hard, and intellectually he knew it was probably cold, so a blanket made sense. And if he couldn’t eat, or be repaired or do anything but wait for the sunrise… “Hungry? Bored?”

“Use your words,” the medic scolded. “You want to be left alone, or you want something to keep you from being bored?

Words. Okay. Words were important… something Bluestreak _knew._ He remembered talking to other people all the time. They were just… hard. “The… second. Don’t leave me alone?”

“If someone stays in the room with you, you’ll just try to eat them.” Bluestreak ducked his head as best he could, because that was true. The hunger was already gnawing at his lines again, clawing at his mind and spark, just barely held in check by that oddity in Ratchet’s scent that told him not to. “But someone will be right outside, guarding the cell. We’re not going to leave you here. The gladiator pits were wrong on every level. At _best_ they were a disaster waiting to happen, and we will not be making the same mistake with you.”

A burst of relief popped in Bluestreak’s chest. He hadn’t realized how strong that fear had been until it had been taken away. He still didn’t know what would happen to him, but he wasn’t going to be locked away for eternity. He let out a soft rumbling sound.

Ratchet looked over to Bluestreak’s face and his gaze softened minutely. He ran his fingers along an uninjured part of the vampire’s nearest doorwing, and Bluestreak rumbled again.

“As for something to entertain you…” Ratchet trailed off, considering, while his fingers idly kept up their soothing strokes on Bluestreak’s door. “Here,” he withdrew to pull something from his subspace. A portable communicator. “Fragging Prime loaded this onto this thing. Someone might as well use it.” He poked it. “I’ll set it to autoplay, so you can listen to it.”

“An introduction to meditation,” said a voice from the communicator. “First cycle…”

The medic paused the playback. “Is this alright?”

Something other than his own pain and hunger to think about… and Ratchet would have to come back for his communicator, right? “Yesssir.”

“Good.” The medic set the communicator just out of reach, then pulled two blankets from his subspace and tucked one under and the other over Bluestreak. They were warm and soft and smelled of clean acetone and polished metal. It didn’t banish the death-scent completely, but it was better. “There. If you need anything, you can call Ironhide. He can hear you. Though I warn you, if you call anyone just to lure them in here to eat them,” Ratchet’s voice turned hard, cold, and firm right as the possibility of doing just that occured to Bluestreak, “you will be killed. We can’t afford to keep you if you’re going to do that sort of thing.”

Bluestreak sulked. But he _needed_ fuel! “Yessir.”

“Good. I will see you again tomorrow night.” Ratchet restarted the meditation app as he stood. “We’ll figure this out. You’re not the Autobots’ first vampire, just our first fledge. We need to get you back onto an even keel, and then you can start making your choices.”

He left.

Bluestreak heard the door’s lock engage. He whimpered. He could hear/smell/taste Ironhide still right outside and he considered calling for him to try and eat him, despite the threat, but he didn’t really want to die and anyway he was still too tied up to really catch anything. He slumped where he was to sulk.

He was so _hungry._

The meditation app had actually gone through three or four routines before Bluestreak really started listening to it. He didn’t really need to meditate, but he needed a distraction of _some_ sort.

So he listened, and he breathed when it told him to, and he focused inward, on his sparkbeat, when it told him to… and hey. He still had a sparkbeat. He hadn’t been really sure he would. People said vampires didn’t have sparks, but there was his. He could hear it.

Stories said that vampires were the husks of dead mechs, but if he had a spark, he couldn’t be dead. Right?

His breath though… that was… odd. He focused on it, just like the mech in the recording said to. But it was harder than expected. He concentrated on breathing, drawing air into his coolant system and engine to create a calming rhythm… And that highlighted how he just… didn’t breathe, unless he was concentrating on it.

His fangs ached. He had to keep them retracted so he could talk! But there was no one to talk to right now. He could talk to the walls, he supposed, but when he tried it, words were… hard. So the next time the recording cycled through a new routine and guided him through the process of tensing and relaxing his frame one myomer musculature grouping at a time, he yawned, pulling in his fangs further, then relaxed, letting them distend. Oooh yeah. That felt… okay. He couldn’t really close his mouth anymore, but it was worth it.

In that sort of deep relaxation, he flicked through his processor functions, noting what was there and what had been deleted. A lot was different, but he had to expend processing power on suppressing the hunger, and on breathing, so he didn’t have a lot left over to look the differences now, but he noted them to go over later.

Warm and cool… The blankets felt warm, if he didn’t think about it too hard. But he had nothing to do except think and he was trying not to focus on the chest wound. So warm and cool were both a bit… psychosomatic. The blanket felt warm, but it wasn’t really. Or at least it didn’t make Bluestreak feel warmer. Maybe if it was heated…

He felt the approaching sunrise, deep in his spark, before anything else. His chronometer seemed to be one of those things that had been deleted, but that should be easy to reinstall. He remembered getting a bug or corruption in that subroutine several times and reinstalling the software so it was no big deal. Not like the approaching sunrise. The room was nice and dark, and that was good, but it wasn’t _safe._

He struggled again, clawing uselessly at the air and gnashing his fangs at nothing. He couldn’t get free, he knew he couldn’t get free, but he had to _try--_

He knew the moment the sun breached the horizon, though he could see nothing of it. He knew it and it was like being blasted clean. His mind shut down.

.

✱✱✱

.

There was another vampire nearby. Bluestreak breathed in the scent of acid and crystal and rusted metal. The death-scent was gone, replaced by a collection of scents that were decidedly _other._ Not Iacon. He wasn’t sure how he was so sure of that, but Iacon was Iacon and this place -- he breathed again, took in the scent, evaluated the scent beneath the heavier one of nearby zap ponies -- was not. Close maybe, but not in the city.

Wherever he was, another vampire meant he had to get _away_ before he fed. He shouldered the heavy blanket off of himself and stood, meaning to go find a nice feeding territory for _himself…_ but was brought up short by the handcuffs, attached by a chain to a loop in the wall.

Ratchet… Bluestreak scented him… stepped around the low wall, not quite entering the room. “Are you sane enough to talk?”

Was he? Did it matter? Bluestreak was hungry… He didn’t want to bite the medic though. There was something…

“I suppose not.” Ratchet sounded resigned, which was when Bluestreak realized that instead of answering, he’d started chewing on the chain with his distended fangs, trying to pry himself loose. The medic disappeared, and Bluestreak whined at the loss of food, even if he wasn’t going to eat that.

Ratchet didn’t stay gone. He returned only a few kliks later, dragging another stumbling, sedated turbodog behind him. Remembering that he’d been allowed to eat the dog before, Bluestreak’s mouth watered. Maybe he’d be allowed to eat the dog now… “Here,” the medic. “Hopefully this is enough to get you talking again.”

Ratchet had to step into striking range, but that oddity in the medic’s scent meant that -- given a choice between him and the dog -- Bluestreak lunged for the turbodog.

He dug claws into the dog’s side to drag the howling creature closer and bit so deeply into its neck he felt its spinal struts snap. The howls cut off abruptly, and Bluestreak drained it dry before discarding it.

The medic was watching expressionlessly. “Can you talk now?” he asked evenly.

Could he? If he didn’t, would he get fed another dog? He licked his bound claws clean as he considered.

“Yes I will continue to feed you mechanimals all night,” Ratchet said, answering Bluestreak’s unspoken question, “but until you talk to me and prove you’re sane, you won’t be given anything _but_ animals, you won’t be given a safe place to lair, and you won’t be given access to cleaning facilities to wash that grime off your claws.”

That meant that if he _was_ sane -- and talked -- he might be given all those things. That sounded good. Bluestreak weighed that against being given another turbodog right now, and made a decision.

“Yzzzz,” he tried.

“Retract your fangs,” the medic reminded him.

Remembering the clenched-fist feeling he’d noticed last night while listening to the meditation recording, Bluestreak concentrated on the unfamiliar bit of his frame and… clenched. The fangs retraced with a _snap._ “Yess. I can talk.” He wanted to get away from the other vampire he could smell nearby, so he could hunt, but he gave his new chains a tug and realized he wasn’t going anywhere. With a whine, he tested the limberness of his frame and was at least pleased to be able to go into a crouch easily.

“Words, Bluestreak.”

Words were _hard._ Bluestreak snarled, but the medic only gazed at him coolly, expectant. “I don’t like it here,” Bluestreak whined. Ratchet tilted his head and made a gesture the new vampire barely recognized as a sort of _keep talking_ one. “There’s nothing to eat here except you and the animals, and there’s competition.”

“He’s not competition. This isn’t his territory.” That made Bluestreak feel a little better. “He’s here in case you break free; we’re not letting you go feral. And this won’t be your territory, either. Eventually a diet of mechanimals will deteriorate your mental state, instead of improve it. We’re still finding volunteers for you. Right now we only have one, who says he doesn’t want to be a permanent food source, but I’m not letting you bite him until you prove you have the control not to drain him completely.”

“If I don’t?” Bluestreak asked. Not because he had any intention of _not,_ but just because he wanted to know. If eventually the mechanimals would erode his control instead of improve it…

Ratchet’s gaze hardened. “If you get to the point where you will no longer improve with just the animals before gaining the control you need not to kill a mech, we will kill you.”

Bleh. But it was hard to be offended. Ratchet was being straightforward and firm about the consequences, but he didn’t smell like he’d _rather_ kill him than… do the other thing. Feed him. Okay. Bluestreak could deal with that. He shook himself with a rattle of plating, and was pleased by how easy the movement was. There was no sign of the grievous chest wound at all. “How do I prove that?”

“I’ll bring you one of the zap ponies,” Ratchet answered, “and you may feed on it, but I want you to pull away before killing it. Ideally when it is near fifty percent. If you can do that, I’ll bring you your temporary volunteer and give you a taste.”

Bluestreak ran his tongue over his fangs and considered. “What if--”

“I won’t let you kill your volunteer,” Ratchet interrupted with a glare. _“Guess_ what the consequences for trying will be.”

“Kill me?” Bluestreak sulked.

Ratchet was utterly unmoved by the sulk. “Yes.”

Bluestreak felt like this was a lot of information, and he really should take the time to think about it first. There was part of him that remembered that at one point he would have, but the promise of more fuel… “Dog first?” He didn’t want to start testing his control yet.

“Good mech,” Ratchet praised, which prompted a sort of strange rumble from Bluestreak’s engine. “You will never be punished for requesting you be able to kill a dog, or a rat, if you’re uncertain of your restraint.”

Bluestreak made a crooning sound, and thought he really should be horrified by how happy he was that he would be allowed to kill _something._

Ratchet returned with another sedated dog. Bluestreak wanted to just pounce on it, rip into it like he had the first, but he hesitated. If he had to not-kill a zap pony and then a mech, then maybe it would be good to be able to tell when he was _getting close_ to killing. The mechanimal struggled weakly when Bluestreak pinned it with his bound hands. He leaned in and licked at the fuel lines. There, he’d bite there… but first… he pressed his audio to the dog’s chest. The panicked whimpers were _loud,_ but he could also hear the animal’s fuel pump and spark.

Sniffing his way back to the terrified turbodog’s throat, Bluestreak slid his fangs into the fuel line, testing _just_ how much pressure he needed to pierce it…

Not very much, as it turned out. The dog yelped and struggled, but with a growl, Bluestreak shifted to use his knee as well as his bound hands to pin it. He needed to be able to _hear._ He listened to the fuel pump, the spark pulse, of the animal. He heard it when the fuel pump became labored with energon loss. He listened as the animal’s spark began to slow.

 _Here,_ he thought. This was where he needed to stop, if he wasn’t going to kill. Then he drew the rest of the dog’s fuel into his own systems, swallowing it down.

He unhooked his fangs from the corpse and looked up at Ratchet, running his tongue over his teeth. He considered the medic, considered his scent, the fuel in his lines…

Nope. Still nope, but maybe when he was _stronger..._

“Ready to try the pony?” Ratchet asked with narrowed optics that said he knew _just_ what Bluestreak had been thinking. Bluestreak crooned. He would like to get to the part where he was allowed to eat mech-fuel. “Use your words.”

“Yessir,” Bluestreak said, obediently. Maybe the words would get easier with practice?

Ratchet stepped close to clear away the corpse. “Here,” he handed the vampire a package that smelled of nylon microfibers and acetone. “Clean your teeth. These are valuable animals and I don’t want any cross contamination from the bite.”

Bluestreak wrinkled his nose at the scent. Clean his… _Really?_

Ratchet folded his arms across his chest. “It’s a condition. From here on out, you don’t bite anything unless your teeth are clean.”

Growling fitfully, Bluestreak ripped open the package. The scent of acetone was even stronger now, and he sneezed in offense. He lightly brushed the cloth over one of his fangs and then the other, barely touching either of them. He looked up at Ratchet, saw the cold, hard unmoved gaze, and grumbled as he cleaned his teeth in earnest.

Bleh. It tasted awful.

But as Ratchet left and began to lead the zap pony into the room, Bluestreak’s mouth watered again. And if he could manage not to kill it…

.

✱✱✱

.

End

  


**Author's Note:**

> Here is a link to the [Vampiric Codex Official Timeline](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uS2EX-d3Npd00EkN2SxOa7010AUFPI0TVqiS2vbnsbQ/edit?usp=sharing).


End file.
